Public Service Allowance Scandal

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cork

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I think the lack of reform in the public sector is not short of a national scandal.

Why is it OK for the vast majority of allowances to remain?

The Minister for Public Sector Reform has not delivered reform.

He has a whole Department at his disposal for this.

Yet this government has no problem cutting the hours of home helps.
 
As someone that works in the public sector, I'm disappointed by the announcement.
I've no doubt there are allowances that are justified, but the 75 million target was just 5% of the total allowance bill.
I have a family member that works in the garda headquarters and some of the allowances do not seem justified in this day and age.

Brendan Howlin said that 800 business cases were put forward which seems to suggest they were all accepted. I rather see an independent body look at these allowances and decide which are no longer justified.
 
I choose to not post my honest opinion about Brendan Howlin because it would be deleted and I would be banned.

Suffice is to say I believe he has failed as the Minister responsible for public sector reform and should resign. Let someone else do the job, someone who is serious about making the changes needed and realising the savings available.

The target announced for this year will not be achieved. The targets announced for future years cannot be achieved while he remains in office.
 
According to tweets from a Newstalk journalist ..

- Staff in the CSO are paid an allowance to replace the photocopier toner so that the OPW aren't called in.
- Receptionists at the HSA get €2400, on top of salary, to guarantee to answer the phone Mon through Fri, 9am to 5pm
- Staff at the Chester Beatty library get a box-making allowance of €15 to 20 per box.
- Security staff at the National Museum who use a CCTV get a camera allowance
- Staff employed and paid as forklift drivers get paid a forklift allowance

Please let these be mistakes / urban myths / made up :eek: !
 
I found this on another forum - but its all in the link anyway (Ive edited it for clarity).

Top Ten List of allowances received the public service:

1) Receptionists in the civil service get a franking allowance of €34 a week for stamping the post.

2) Staff employed and paid a salary to be forklift drivers get an additional allowance called 'the forklift allowance'

3) Civil Servants get a footwear allowance of €65 a year. The report doesn't know but 'feels' this doesn't add up to much

4) Staff at the National Museum who work in the yard get a yard allowance

5) Security staff at the National Museum who use a CCTV get a camera allowance

6) Paramedics get a cardiac allowance for using a defibrillator. Dates back to the 80s

7) General ops get an allowance for taking 30 mins lunch on site but MUST work 1.5 hrs each side of the break

8) Staff at Chester Beatty Library get a box making allowance of €15-20 per box

9) Receptionists at the HSA gets €2400 on top of salary to guarantee to answer phone 9-5 Mon - Fri.

10) Staff at the CSO get an allowance to replace the photocopier toner so that the OPW aren't called in.
 
I'm sure if you went through the list of 1100 allowances the majority of them would appear fair. The trouble is that removing only the obviously unfair ones (the ones you always hear about anecdotally) will not yield much.

The solution? Just suck it up and accept that cost cutting cannot be done without introducing anomalies and a degree of unfairness.

To me an ambition to cut 5% of allowances seemed a pretty low aspiration. I'm with Tarfhead, the fact that the Minister for Reform could only achieve 5% of this unambitious target is unforgiveable. I suspect many public servants would agree. In fact my first thought when I heard this was whether the government are deliberately cocking up on this to make it politically easier to shelve the Croke Park agreement.
 
DerKaiser said:
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I'm with Tarfhead, the fact that the Minister for Reform could only achieve 5% of this unambitious target is unforgiveable.
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Thats the whole point, he didn't even achieve 5%. The 5% target would have produced a saving of €75 million but the saving will be only €3.5 million.

I am a civil servant and receive no allowances and I think some of the ones mentioned are urban myths but I have heard of some in the garda (particularly plain clothes garda) that seem difficult to justify.
 
Shawady said:
Thats the whole point, he didn't even achieve 5%. The 5% target would have produced a saving of €75 million but the saving will be only €3.5 million.
Click to expand...

I wonder what the total cost of the excercise was? Probably not too much change from the €3.5 million in savings :rolleyes:

Shawady said:
I am a civil servant and receive no allowances
Click to expand...

You should talk to your union :D


It seems that a lot of the great defenders of the public sector here on AAM seem to be conspicuously quiet of late...
 
There is only one way this country is going. It's inevitable. This scandal sums it up. No country that ever had a house price bubble like ours ever had a soft landing, and no country that raised taxes and failed to cut spending ever came easily out of recession. Mark my words, we'll still be deep in trouble in 5 years time, and people will be wondering why.
 
Firefly said:
It seems that a lot of the great defenders of the public sector here on AAM seem to be conspicuously quiet of late...
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I hope you don't include me in that bracket (seeing as how I've been like a turkey voting for Christmas on here advocating pay cuts across the PS) - I'm a civil servant too and I don't get any allowances. The only thing I get is travel & subsistence at the civil service rates when I'm required to be out of the office, which is no different than would be the case if I were still working in the private sector.

It's nothing short of a scandal that some of these crazy allowances still exist.

That one about a footwear allowance of €65 a year is definitely not true across the whole civil service, or else nobody knows they should be getting!
 
Just popped on to politics.ie and was amazed to see 4 pages of people agreeing on this scandal. Perhaps the people are awake after all. Though I agree with what most are saying - the lack of choice in Irish politics is demoralising.
 
I've never heard of any of the Civil Service allowances nor have I received any in my ten years. I've never even heard of a 'receptionist' in the Civil Service.

It looks like most of the CS 'perks' appear to relate to Service Officer grades and not to 95% of CS staff. I cannot comment on any other allowances.
 
truthseeker said:
3) Civil Servants get a footwear allowance of €65 a year. The report doesn't know but 'feels' this doesn't add up to much
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This should say:

Some Civil Servants get a footwear allowance of €65 a year.
This is how the urban myths start.

In general it would only be Civil Servants who have to wear a uniform (the lowest grade of Civil Servant) that would receive this allowance as they are compelled to wear certain footwear for their job. There are circa 30,000 Civil Servants - less than 200 currently receive this allowance.
 
mandelbrot said:
I hope you don't include me in that bracket (seeing as how I've been like a turkey voting for Christmas on here advocating pay cuts across the PS)
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I certainly wasn't mandelbrot.

The problem here is that those getting the benefits are organised (unions) whereas everyone else isn't and we are all just moaning about it without any real clout.

Just to add: the really difficult decisions will only be made if/when the ECB/IMF start reducing the lending to us. Without access to the markets, the government of the day will have to cut costs as appropriate.
 
gianni said:
This should say:

Some Civil Servants get a footwear allowance of €65 a year.
This is how the urban myths start.

In general it would only be Civil Servants who have to wear a uniform (the lowest grade of Civil Servant) that would receive this allowance as they are compelled to wear certain footwear for their job. There are circa 30,000 Civil Servants - less than 200 currently receive this allowance.
Click to expand...

It should. As I said, I posted it from another forum.

On the footwear allowance. If you follow the link (which I just fixed), and search the page for 'footwear allowance' and then open the pdf you will see:
It is thought unlikely that there are more than a couple of hundred Service Officers/Attendants who would qualify for this allowance so the cost of the allowance would be small
Click to expand...
 
Firefly said:
I wonder what the total cost of the excercise was? Probably not too much change from the €3.5 million in savings :rolleyes:



You should talk to your union :D


It seems that a lot of the great defenders of the public sector here on AAM seem to be conspicuously quiet of late...
Click to expand...


Because we are fed up of responding to the continuous threads, the same old arguments, the myths, the exagerations and the downright lies and then seeing yet another thread starting up with the same old, same old. I too am a civil servant who doesn't get any allowances. The only civil servants I do know who get allowances are those who are on call 24 hours a day ie Private secretaries to Ministers and Secretary Generals.
I am sure that there are some public servants who get unjustified allowances and I have no problem with that being reviewed and stopped. It's my tax as well as yours that pays these allowances. But it would be helpful, when posting, if people specified which areas of the Public Sector they are talking about. I can explain, justify or agree with complaints made about the civil service. But the Guards, Prison Officers etc etc are completely and totally different organisations which I support with my taxes but do not belong to. Even within the civil service, as Truthseeker has quite fairly clarified, you can't generalise. But no doubt someone is now rushing around saying all Civil Servants get free shoes.
 
TarfHead said:
According to tweets from a Newstalk journalist ..

- Staff in the CSO are paid an allowance to replace the photocopier toner so that the OPW aren't called in.
- Receptionists at the HSA get €2400, on top of salary, to guarantee to answer the phone Mon through Fri, 9am to 5pm
- Staff at the Chester Beatty library get a box-making allowance of €15 to 20 per box.
- Security staff at the National Museum who use a CCTV get a camera allowance
- Staff employed and paid as forklift drivers get paid a forklift allowance

Please let these be mistakes / urban myths / made up :eek: !
Click to expand...

As a civil servant I agree that 1 above sounds ridiculous.
The rest do not seem to relate to the civil service but more details would need to be given in any case explaining why these allowances were granted before it is possible to give a fair and informed comment. Just throwing out one lliners like that is not really a fair contribution to the debate.
 
liaconn said:
The rest do not seem to relate to the civil service
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It's public sector, not civil service. I doubt anyone in receipt of a forklift allowance refers to themselves as a civil servant ;) !

And if this thread is to become a bashing thread, then it should be a Brendan Howlin bashing one. The Coalition have been in power for 18 months and the time for talking about reform is gone. This is the time for action and he has failed.
 
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